A lot of puzzle game

The one niggle I have with this is that some of the puzzles are impossible to solve - if by 'solve' one means fulfilling the preconditions - without using additional powers. The story itself is amusing (and does not end in clichee, yay!); and when you're done with THAT, there's >200 further levels. If you enjoy an unconventional mahjong, this is the game to get.

Hostile Environment

Any game unintuitive enough that I can only play by going online to work out the mechanics will never be my favourite. The harshness and gore I was somewhat prepared for (though they are not favourite features in any game), but what turned me off completely was the female NPC being fridged in the very first scene. You don't want me to enjoy this? Fine. I'm not enjoying it. Goodbye.

Feels phoned in

I've got Chateau Garden by the same developer, and have played it _a lot_. This is almost the same game with a little difference - small adjustments in gameplay (but more similar than different), different level design, somewhat different graphics (but same layout) for the 'garden design' part. Same music.

Given how much I love Chateau Garden, I was hoping to like this just as much - instead it felt tired and repetitive. I don't think it matters _which_ of them you buy - they're great on their own - ... just don't buy both.

Slightly Fragmented

This is a nice follow-up to the original King's Bounty: the difficulty is a little more uneven (leading to much running around in the hope of finding an enemy I *could* beat), some of the changes in gameplay were annoying rather than enhancing gameplay, but there's a great selection of new troops that offer new gameplay.

Downhill trend

This is a game I never finished because it simply went on too long and I lost interest - there are a lot of interesting troops and quests, but I was also running into a fair few bugs (I struggle with the miniature text, I can play around the invisible troops, though they make fights... interesting, but not getting rewards for completed quests sucks.)

I also hated being railroaded by the story: You have to fulfil quests that I really did not want to do in order to proceed, and then you get told 'you should not have done this'. Well, duh.

Overall, you're better off replaying the first two instalments in this series.

Keeps its promises

This is the kind of game you play when you have no brain and need something that's quick and amusing: the graphics are a bit twee, but in a good way, and the gameplay is straightforward. This game makes a real effort to create an ongoing narrative, which I appreciated.

Fun Images to puzzle out: what's not to like? Quite a bit, actually.

Turns out, the gamification of it. You can see only five pieces at a time, they're often very obscure (which would be good), in order to progress you must solve these puzzles very fast and without a single mistake. This often means restarting a level until it's possible or until you've memorised the exact position of all pieces.

I find it ironic that of all the games I play (which includes a fair few action games like Shadows of Mordor) this is the one where physical restrictions (inability to hold down the mouse button and move the mouse with precision for long stretches of time until I have found the right spot for a piece) lose me points/mess up levels most often. Instead of fun, I found this game stressful.

Solid short-form game

This is a game with very simple (but not boring) gameplay and marvellous, marvellous graphics, perfect for a quick round. You can adapt several different strategies, but the game never needs you to sit there with spreadsheet and calculator at hand.

Level 45. Had my money's worth already

This is a mixture of solitaire and kingdom builder, which makes mechanisms that otherwise often irritate me - replay levels to grind more gold - actually meaningful. The levels are lovingly crafted; both the visuals and the gameplay are keeping my interest so far, and given the varied level-up options, I would guess this has as much replay value as the excellent SevenSeas solitaire.

This is well-crafted in every aspect, and I am enjoying it tremendously.

Gamification of Games

Play more to shuffle! Play levels over and over to be lucky enough to hit arbitrary targets (exact mode of scoring unknown) so you can unlock the next level! Waste a shuffle so you can see which tiles you're looking for!

Mahjong already *is* a game. It doesn't need to be gamified. I played this through once because I was curious about the last set of levels, but after I finished, I deleted it with a sigh of relief - and I continue to look for a Mahjong game that I *want* to replay for the sheer fun of it.

Uneven puzzle game

It's also quite possibly the most irritating type of puzzle game: some of the gameplay is fixed and you need a good strategy to solve it, while some of the game is completely random and you need a lot of luck to succeed.This does not make for a good combination. I found the levels either too easy (there's only one solution, and it's obvious) or too hard, with nothing in the middle, which leads to a lot of frustration and no replay value. This is a well-crafted, amusing game; it just doesn't come together for me.

Not There

I like the genre, I have liked other offerings from the same developer (Egyptian & Sherlock); I have disliked an older game (Asian Griddlers), but this is the one that makes me say 'no more'. Too many of the levels try to be cute insetad of solvable (when there is more than one solution and you need to go by the preview picture or use hints, the puzzle has failed), and there's a bug in one of the sections that means you cannot play half the levels in it. The crowning glory is the level where there are too many numbers to fit on the display, so you solve the numbers you can see and surprise! make a mistake because there's an extra field you could not have known about.

This is a game that could have been fun if the developers had done their job and tested it with an eye to gameplay. 'remember the image and click the fields that come closest' is, I suppose, a game of sorts, but not the one I signed up for and spent my money on.

Does what it says on the tin

It's a collection of grid puzzles, nothing more, but nothing less. Unlike the 'Asian Griddlers' from the same developer, this is a bunch of challenging puzzles that will help you pass the time. There's no particularly strong story to this, but it doesn't need one. And for me, it works perfectly under 10.11, so no complaints about that, either.

Not quite there

I bought this because I have the awkwardly named 'Egypt Picross Pharaohs Riddles' which I enjoyed very much. The pictures here are too symmetrical, which makes the gameplay more awkward, and several puzzles have more than one solution, so you end up guessing according to the picture rather than solving the puzzle as such. Equally annoying is that you can't cancel a bad guess in mid-move; together they add up to a rather unsatisfying experience.

Challenging Puzzle Game

This is a nice challenging game when you need a breather: you need to do maths in your head, but all puzzles had exactly one solution (even if some of them are very tricky); on the whole, much more addictive than I had expected.

Great game lacking final polish

This is a great game but the minor niggles are niggly enough that I cannot give it five start. (Take this to be four-and-a-half). It is epic - I've only scratched the surface of the world and every area has places to explore. The setting is built with great love and in much detail, and while there's a strong storyline, you don't feel railroaded. The game feels fair rather than out to get you - there are plenty of challenges and fast and furious fights, but they never feel rigged.

The niggles are things like socketable items not slotting into sockets, items in your inventory getting re-sorted so I can't separate things I want to keep from those I want to sell, no clear savepoints, slightly dodgy camera and klutzy menu navigation - they don't hurt my enjoyment much, but they annoy. And when you plan on spending 40-60h (at least!) on one game, having to confirm every start and every quit twice adds up. On the other hand, it runs very smoothly on my recent Macbook Air and sits well in the background, and it's interesting without demanding 100% concentration and reflexes, so this definitely has a place on my list of favourite games.

Unplayable on 10.11

I briefly owned this for 40 minutes of gameplay, at which point I hit a fatal bug: on OSX 10.11 I could not interact with the dialogues. Which meant that I could not get past the second level. Up to that point, it had been a very challenging (but unimaginative) game: levels are fixed, enemies spawn in the same place if you die and behave the same, so it's more of a puzzle - what do I need to do to defeat these - than the action RPG I was hoping for.

Not quite polished

This is a good, solid Match-3 game that's nicely responsive. But it's also unfinished in so many ways: the app does not respond to 'quit' and if you switch to another application you have to retrieve its window by clicking on the dock because there's no other way to un-minimise it. The garden is phoned in - this is a desktop app, and instead of one small area, that will be crammed with items when you're done (but has all of the layout from the start, a little more effort could have put into wandering around in the grounds and developing a more visually-pleasing result. The gameplay itself is a mixture of puzzle and luck - which means that if you want to 'solve' a level by getting maximum points, you will have to replay it a number of times until luck is on your side, but you click several times to replay it where a single button would have done the trick.

Amusing enough

My favourite solitaire is SevenSeas solitaire, and admittedly thats a high bar to clear, but one cannot be a pirate all the time. This has an amusing backstory, but the levels themselves are boring and somewhat phoned in - draping the cards in different ways does not distract from the fact that most of them seem to be '4-5 rows that you need to match'. There's no feel of 'level design' here; the game lacks generosity (no undo for those 'oops, didn't see that' moments, cannot play a joker after the last card) and all too often I end a session because a level has three playable cards, they're all face cards, you cannot use jokers on face cards, so you hope that a playable card turns up sooner than halfway through your deck.

I like it, and it's worth picking up on sale, but don't expect great gameplay.